Politics Blog

My Take on the Kerry Acceptance Speech

I was terribly unimpressed by the Kerry speech. I do think he will get a small bounce - a few points – but I don’t think it will last long. He won’t get any bounce from the speech itself, but from the media surrounding it. The people who would not sit through a 55 minute speech (most everyone I know) will see Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw, the chicks on The View, etc., talking about what an incredible success it was.

I think he succeeded on two of the three points I talked about last week.

1) Perception - he did pretty well on this point. He surrounded himself with the band-of-brothers and left viewers with those images, but he set up a big ticking timebomb with that, too. When voters learn about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and other anti-Kerry vet groups, they might feel a little duped. He did a lot more attacking than I would have expected, but the media will never point that out, so only those who already liked Kerry enough to watch the entire speech will realize it and they will love him for it.

2) Expectations - he did best on this point. I said “The way I see it, if Kerry can produce enough pink in his cheeks to convince people that he has a pulse, he will have greatly exceeded expectations.” Okay, he has a pulse.

3) Timing - I think the timing of the convention is a real problem for Democrats. The Olympics will start soon, which will slow any momentum he might get. It is summer and people are on vacation or justaren’t concentrating on politics like they will be in September. I expect some great jobs, growth and other economic numbers will be coming out soon to make Kerry and Edwards’ doom and gloom economic talk sound uninformed and divorced from reality. Bush gets to go last, closer to the election, just before 9/11 in NYC with Guiliani – that is hard to beat.

In conclusion, unless another terrorist attack takes place on U.S. soil in such a way that it can be blamed on a deficiency of the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies, or Bush makes a blunder of monumental proportions in the debates, Bush will win in a rather big way.

UPDATE: In addition to the mistake Kerry made by placing too much emphasis on Vietnam, which will give extra importance to the opposition of Kerry by vet groups, he also messed up by not addressing his two decade long Senate record. Not only can Bush/Cheney now point out the record of votes Kerry didn’t take the opportunity to explain or defend, but they can show demonstrably (minutes allocated in Edwards and Kerry speeches) that Kerry is trying to hide his Senate record.

UPDATE 2: John Hawkins has a good take on the speech. I think I agree with everything he wrote here.

UPDATE3: The Balloon Malfunction - I have been hearing about this all night, but didn’t hear it because I wasn’t watching CNN. Drudge has the text of the great bleeping balloon malfunction. It is too *bleeping* funny.

UPDATE 4: (This is an update record for me.) Kate O’Beirne has some great comments on the speech at The Corner. I agree with everything she says, too.

UPDATE 5: Betsy Newmark’s review of the speech is up. I especially like her points that Kerry’s cheap shot about Bush “wanting” to go to war is particularly terrible demagoguery for a man who voted for the war and her point that when he attacks the Saudis he is attacking an ally. I thought Bush was the one going around alienating and offending our allies.

UPDATE 6: Matthew May has a good piece at The American Thinker about how Kerry missed the ball by failing to convince us that he truly understands the serious threat of terrorism.

As I’ve been saying for literally years now, I’ve been afraid of John Kerry’s nomination acceptance speech. His JFK-esque, old-world, soaring rhetoric had the potential to give him a huge convention bounce.

But his speech writers have made the fatal mistake of “dumbing down” his speech. Rather than “letting Kerry be Kerry,” they’ve tried to make him sound like George W. Bush or John Edwards. With the result that Kerry is delivering one of the worst acceptance speeches in recent memory.

I’ve only watched about five minutes of the speech so far. But it’s already hit all the wrong notes in an attempt to be folksy. “Trees are cathedrals?” I can already hear the remote controls clicking away to reality shows. After watching only a few minutes of the speech, I can say that this is an unmitigated disaster for the Kerry campaign. His convention bounce is going to be nowhere near as large as I feared it would be.

UPDATE: “Mine were Greatest Generation parents?” I know what “Greatest Generation” means, John. But 99 percent of TV viewers do not. As a conservative, I’m loving this nationally televised self-destruction of an ultra-liberal Democrat.

UPDATE 2: “Make peace in Vietnam?” That war ended 30 years ago! No one cares, John. This is just sad. I’m not sure if I should be posting about this speech anymore. It seems downright cruel.

UPDATE 3: Kerry is old, craggy, negative, and finished. His only hope is to turnit around in the presidential debates. And to hope that the GOP stumbles in its convention.

UPDATE 4: Attack of the triple-negatives: “There is nothing so pessimistic as saying that America can’t do better.”

This is terribly sad. I feel the urge to shut up and let the candidate self-destruct. But, like some horrible car wreck, I just can’t turn away!

UPDATE 5: “So tonight… I accept your nomination for president of the United States.” – longest, most pointless acceptance sentence ever! I can’t bear to watch anymore. But I feel drawn to it, like staring at some horrible car wreck. Please, Powers-That-Be, forgive me.

UPDATE 6: Ohmigod! He’s thanking Carol Moseley-Braun and Dennis Kucinich! Who’s idea was this? No one knows who these pod-people are!

It wasn’t that long ago that Microsoft was fighting for its life in federal District Court.  Then, a GOP Administration took over and the antitrust attack dogs were called off.

Now?

They’re planning to hire new workers by the thousands; they’re shelling out billions of dollars to shareholders in the form of a special, cash dividend; they’re raising their regular dividend; they’re buying back shares (which, by definition, increases shareholder equity); and they’re yet again coming out with a new product line.

I freakin’ love capitalism!

I was reminded by a post at Power Line that I did not follow-up on my post which asked if Edwards would mention the death of his son, Wade, in his speech last night, reminiscent of Al Gore’s 1996 use of his sister’s battle with lung cancer, for political advantage. I am happy to say that he did not. I think he deserves quite a bit of credit for this because not only did he not use it, I did not hear many of the Democrat operatives raising it either, which leads me to believe that he made it clear to them that it would not be used as a political talking point. Since I did have some problems with the way his young children have been paraded around the stage at various times, I did not want to neglect giving credit where credit is due.

RantingProfs posted this item from James Taranto about the hypocrisy of those keeping count of only the fallen American soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed in the war, while ignoring the hundreds of thousands killed by Saddam and his thugs and the thousands killed at the hands of terrorists.

You know, for those of us who grew up in the 1970’s or 1980’s (or prior), and who can remember the days when the Democratic Party ran this country like the Tsars ran Mother Russia, sometimes, I believe, it’s useful to just sit back for a moment and to marvel at the astonishing re-alignment of political power that’s taken place over the past 10-15 years.  In many ways, this dovetails nicely with a recent post by Polipundit, in which he aptly described the Democrats in terms of the minority party status they so richly deserve.

Let’s postulate the following for a minute:

1)  In 1990, the Democratic Party controlled 30 State Governorships, and the GOP 18.  Now?  They control 22 of them.  The GOP controls 28, including: California (for 16 of the past 23 years), New York (since 1994), Florida (since 1998), and Texas (since 1994).

2)  As of January 1991, the Democrats controlled 267 seats (!) in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Now?  For God’s sake, they’re in serious danger of falling below 200 seats, following this November’s election.

3)  Also in January 1991, the Democratic Party had 56 seats in the U.S. Senate.  Now?  The GOP has a 51-48 majority, and the Democrats might not have even 45 seats when the dust settles on Nov. 3rd.

The Party of the People, right?  Yep.  And, it’s a “bitterly divided nation,” right?  Indeed.  The GOP has divided and conquered them, and they’re pretty freakin’ bitter about it.

Note: Fact checkers?  Google, my friends.  All of the above data is easily accessible, in the public domain.

UPDATE: Eagle-eyed and large-brained commentator, Charlotte, has pointed out that an even more telling indication of the stunning re-alignment, in favor of the GOP, lies with the massive shifts in the legislatures of the various states.  Indeed, I agree 100 percent.  The numbers?  As follows:

In 1992, Democrats controlled both chambers of 25 separate state legislatures, to merely 8 for the GOP.  At the conclusion of the 2002 election cycle, however, the GOP controlled 21 state legislative bodies, whereas the Democrats merely controlled 16.  That’s a net gain for the GOP of legislative control in 22 states.  22 states . . . in merely 10 years!

Furthermore, in 1992, the Democrats won 59 percent of the total state legislative seats available throughout the nation.  Conversely, in the 2002 election cycle, the GOP won an outright majority of the aggregate state legislative seats; the very first time that had occurred in . . . . 40 years! 

This incredible Esquire article by Tom Junod should be required reading for everyone involved in the Bushcampaign. (Link via Lucianne.com) In it, the writer who believes Bush to be “an asshole", begins to wonder, “What if Bush is right?”

Still, I have to admit to feeling a little uncertain of my disdain for this president when forced to contemplate the principle that might animate his determination to stay the course in a war that very well may be the end of him politically. I have to admit that when I listen to him speak, with his unbending certainty, I sometimes hear an echo of the same nagging question I ask myself after I hear a preacher declaim the agonies of hellfire or an insurance agent enumerate the cold odds of the actuarial tables. Namely: What if he’s right?

As easy as it is to say that we can’t abide the president because of the gulf between what he espouses and what he actually does , what haunts me is the possibility that we can’t abide him because of us

This is the fourth day of the Democratic Nuanced Convention.  After all the talk, you’d figure the important topics would have been covered, like the War in Iraq, Terrorism, and so on, right?  Well, maybe not.  I checked the transcripts to be sure, and here’s what the top Democrats (so far) have had to say about the top concerns (judging from the statements made during the Primaries):

Former VP Al Gore (transcript):
(No reference to 9/11)
(No reference to Al Qaeda)
(No reference to Saddam Hussein)
(No reference to Iraq)
(No reference to Osama bin Laden)
(No reference to Terrorism)
 
Former President Jimmy Carter (transcript):
9/11: 

It is amazing how Democrats who have done nothing but bash Bush for over a year using the most vitriolic language heard in a Presidential election in my lifetime are now blaming negativity in the campaign on the Republicans. Of course, they will get away with it because the mainstream media in America is little better than a Democrat Party Pravda. New England Republican has a great post blasting Edwards’ claim last night that Republicans are the ones going negative.